Although both television programming and the Internet have undergone an explosion of content, the two have essentially expanded and developed independently. There have been relatively few successful attempts to marry these two areas of communication. Accordingly, despite the vast business opportunities afforded by television, the potential of exploiting or enhancing revenues via the Internet has been largely untapped. The same is true with respect to radio stations, which are being all but left out of the information revolution.
Although some efforts have made to made to link these two areas, these efforts have suffered from disadvantages. Users can often obtain more information about their favorite programming or station by accessing a website on the World Wide Web which is dedicated to that programming. However, while the website may contain useful information which is of interest to the user, the user has to overcome a number of obstacles to get to that website. The user must first obtain an electronic address such as a Uniform Resource Locators ("URL") for the website and enter that electronic address exactly into the user's computer. These addresses are often long and complicated. These inconveniences can dissuade those who would otherwise be interested in finding programming information on the Internet.
Another manner in which broadcast programming and the Internet have been linked is allowing users to electronically communicate via the Internet with a live broadcast show. The television programming may change in response to the information being sent to the broadcaster, such as by broadcasting a transcript of the messages sent. Again, however, this method also requires the user to know and correctly use the appropriate URL.
Further, the foregoing efforts to link broadcast programming with the Internet also require that the user stay connected to one particular website. If the user wishes to find information on the Internet which is associated with different programming, they are required to change websites and undergo the same inconveniences of finding and entering the appropriate URL.
It would be advantageous, therefore, if there were a method and apparatus which saved the user the difficulty of finding and entering proper on-line electronic addresses associated with broadcast programming. There is an accompanying need for a method and apparatus which automatically connects the computer to different addresses as the programming changes.